What’s Going on Here
I am running a two-session game of Dust Devils Revenged starting Saturday. I haven’t really done any prep and I’m not using pregens, so I thought it might be interesting to blog the whole experience from Game Prep through AP to a review of Dust Devils Revenged. It’s much more ambitious than I planned for post on The Depot, but I b’lieve I’ll give it a shot.

Game Prep
First off, a couple of tools.
The Adventure Funnel from Dr. Rotwang’s Blog.
A western name generator I made using The Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator.

While the Adventure Funnel is great for traditional RPG adventures, Dust Devils is much more about emergent story than achieving a goal. With this in mind I used the funnel to help flesh out the supporting characters and their relationship.

Using the Adventure Funnel I came up with this:
Goal: Capture Levi Oden, wanted for murder, horse thievery, and violence a sundry.

Obstacles:

1. Levi Oden under Marshal’s protection (maybe even a deputy or Lily’s lover, or both).
2. Deputies make sport of newcomers
3. Town generally lawless
4. Terrifying Storm, flash floods,
5. Parson gets killed standing up to someone
6. Town Doctor’s daughter
7. Levi Oden has an upstanding reputation–he keeps the deputies in check.
8. Levi Oden is expecting to be followed and has a cache of travelling gear in a cave outside of town.
9. Los Caballeros - A gang of Mexican bandits? Zorro-esque? Wandering Freelance Lawmen? Rustlers?

Details:

• Flies on a bloated dog’s corpse (Blame Blood Meridian for that one.
• Lily Abernathy and Oden Levi are lovers. She is just using him, he is genuinely in love.
• Marshal Abernathy knows about his cheatin’ wife and aims to do something about it.
• Marshal Abernathy is having his own affair with Doc Parker’s daughter, Dora.
• Deputy Pete Holden is Lily Abernathy’s brother
• Deputy Tom Deggs is almost a “slow wit.” He follows Dep. Holden like a loyal dog.
• Parson Finch was killed accidentally by Dora Parker when he threatened to tell Doc Parker about her affair with Marshal Abernathy.
• Pete Holden will do damn near anything that his sister, Lily, asks.
• Saloon Owner, Jed Nuttal, is sweet on Lily and wants Levi out of the way.
• What does Lily want out of the situation? What does she gain by her affair with Levi?
• Los Cabelleros are hunting Deputy Holden. If a PC is possibly wanted they may recognize him as well.